TGI........June!

Wow, what a relief today to turn the calendar and have it relatively empty. May was filled with a lot of fun things, but oh my was it busy. Here's just a quick run down of the months events.
- weekly soccer practices for Abby & Bridget and Saturday games
- piano recital for Abby & Bridget
- dance recital for Abby, Bridget & Ava (btw - we had to attend two separate recitals because they couldn't arrange all the girls classes into one show, so we sat through 3 hours of dance!)
- a 4 day trip to Montana for me for my grandpa's funeral. I spent many days prepping for this to make it as easy as possible for Quinn. I had all the girls clothes laid out for all four days, dinners planned each night and an itinerary for who needed to go where when. The only thing I couldn't help out more on was the hair fixing - Quinn managed really well.
- planning and executing teacher appreciation week for Bridget's class. This included taking over the class for 45 min. one day and collecting money for and buying a class gift.
- girl scout stuff - putting together an awards ceremony for the girls and prepping a habitat for humanity house for the girls to paint (I missed the actual painting part - I was in Montana)
- hosting a neighborhood barbecue and outside movie night. Quinn actually put quite a bit of time and energy into this, but I helped a little too!
- birthday Luau for Ava & Iris. Their actual birthdays got lost in the shuffle of recitals and such, so we celebrated with a big party a few days later. It was a fun party to plan and the weather cooperated so we could have it outside.
- planting time. May means time to plant a garden and get all those summer annuals in. We have a very small garden, but a very large rock wall that requires a lot of weeding.
- two year-end school parties to help with. One required me filling over 50 water balloons - my fingers were a little raw and my shirt a little wet after over an hour of this.
- 4 new babies born this month. Part of my calling is to arrange meals for these new moms and also visit them and their new babies.
- Mother's day - which I mostly missed being in Montana - but I came home to wonderful surprises and gifts from my wonderful family!
- clearing out the basement so we can finish it. Again, this task mostly fell on Quinn's shoulders, but I have spent some time going through boxes and purging and packing and also planning how we want to finish this thing out. We are now the proud owners of a new gas fireplace - too bad it's summer now - we'll have to wait a few months to actually enjoy it!
Now all this is in addition to our regular routine that includes weekly dance lessons for the older three, weekly piano lessons for the older two, volunteering weekly in Bridget's class at school and all the other little day to day household duties. As I said before, all very fun and exciting stuff, just a bit much crowded into one month. That's why I'm looking forward to June so hopefully we can get caught up on some of the things that have fallen by the wayside (Laundry!). Did I mention that I managed to find time to read all 600+ pages of The Host? Good thing I've got my priorities straight.